The price of illegally traded ivory in Central Africa has shot up by 900 per
cent in the past year and poachers are becoming more violent, according to
the head of the national parks agency in Gabon.

African forest elephants will disappear by the end of the decade if the ivory
trade is not stopped, Lee White believes.

In the Seventies and Eighties the boom in ivory hunting — which devastated
elephant populations and led to an international ban on the ivory trade —
was feeding Western markets. Today, ivory is flowing to the East. In
particular, soaring Chinese demand is pumping